Sport in East Africa. 307 



cocoanut grove about a couple of miles off. The 

 men, anxious to get drink, were hurrying off to 

 collect toddy, which is always procurable in such 

 " shambas," and had moved camp earlier than 

 ordered, and if I had not fortunately seen them I 

 should have gone back to camp for nothing, and they 

 would have been hopelessly drunk by the time I 

 overtook them. I had by this time got to a sort 

 of bund or dam which forms a kind of breakwater 

 to a hollow, which in the rains is a " jheel." Using 

 my binoculars, and scanning the country, I noticed a 

 narrow path which apparently led to the same des- 

 tination or thereabouts, to which my camp was 

 bound, so I hurried along in order to get there, if I 

 could, as soon as or very soon after my people. 

 But the way was not so smooth as it looked ; 

 there were ravines to cross and much broken 

 ground. Fortunately the man with me had been 

 employed in that very shamba, and, anxious to get 

 his share of drink with the others, as I thought, he 

 went merrily along, but I fear his object was more to 

 delay me than to accelerate my arrival, so as to give 

 his confreres time to secure the toddy before I got 

 in. Be that as it may, he took me a roundabout 

 way after all, for close as the grove appeared to be, 

 it was fully eight o'clock before I got to the hut, 

 which had been arranged for my accommodation. On 

 asking my servant, a low caste Madrassie, a good- 

 enough boy when sober, why he had not waited for 

 me to return to camp before moving, he audaciously 

 asserted I had ordered him to go on as the things were 

 packed, and the Africans being in the plot, swore so 

 too. As this was their first offence I let them off with 



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